Chapter 10 - Burnt-Out Stars
The rain had gradually let up and was now nothing more than a whisper against the glass. The street lights threw weird shadows and shapes against the dashboard of the car, a feature film that seemed engrossing to Emily. She knew she'd reacted on an impulse. Coming to Spencer's house like that. With no thoughts about the consequences. What if Toby had answered that door? What if it had been him finding a disheveled (read: shattered) Emily on the other side of his front door? How would she have explained herself?
She didn't know.
She realized she hadn't even cared. It felt as if she'd just woken up from a nightmare. A haze of despair had clouded her logic, her mind, her everything. And the only cure she could think of was Spencer.
Spencer. The strong, solid girl sitting next to her. Driving silently. A quiet support. She hadn't said a word since they'd set off so suddenly from Holbrook. No artificially sweet words meant to console. No prying questions. No gentle demands for explanations. Spencer, who was handling this so perfectly that Emily wanted to leap from her seat and hug her and thank her and cry.
No. No crying. She'd wasted enough tears already.
(On someone who entirely didn't deserve it.)
"Spence?"
Spencer almost jumped from her seat, getting so surprised that she lost control of the steering wheel and almost collided with the median. She regained her composure at the last moment, veering the car away from an accident.
"God, Em!" Spencer slowed the car down, going at a respectable forty. "You scared me", she grinned in a very Spencer-esque way, throwing a glance at Emily's direction.
"I didn't know you were that easy to scare", Emily replied slowly, a broken smile lining her lips. (It was a start.)
"Well, you've been silent for about an hour now. You didn't even give me a warning."
"How was I supposed to give you a warning?", Emily asked, raising an eyebrow at Spencer's unusually disjointed logic.
"I don't know!", Spencer mumbled, shrugging. "You could've at least cleared your throat. Or coughed. Like a little ahem-ahem."
"I wasn't about to give a speech or a toast or something." Emily felt another smile wake up inside her and make its way to her lips. She crushed it, choked it, battered it till it died a slow death, unseen. "You are ridiculous."
"Says the girl who showed up at my door at ten thirty in the pouring rain and begged me to elope with her." Spencer's tone was light, and her words were intended as a joke. But she had ventured into the territory that they'd been avoiding and ignoring for the best part of the hour. She's brought up something neither of them were willing to discuss. (Emily wasn't willing to explain, Spencer wasn't willing to ask, although she was surely itching to.)
"I'm sorry", Emily quietly muttered, turning her face away and watching lonely looking cars speed by them. The light that had begun to shine through her cloudy demeanor had flickered off, leaving Spencer marooned in the dark.
"Em. I'm not going to ask you if you're okay. What I want to ask you is why you're not." The words were gentle, like a silent invitation. No need to accept. No need to RSVP. Spencer would take anything but she wouldn't take Emily shutting her out.
Emily felt the festering cut inside her being prodded, sending fresh waves of pain through her veins. Cures hurt too. You couldn't dress a wound without making it sting a little. Spencer was trying to help. But the pain was making her eyes smart, and her vision began to grow blurry again. The world swam, the lights floated, the rain-dewed glass melted in front of her eyes. She choked a sob in her throat, she clamped her lips together and pressed her cheek against the cold glass.
She couldn't reply. She couldn't say the words.
If she did, it would mean that they were real.
And this was a reality she wasn't ready to face. Not yet. So she kept quiet and Spencer, like the absolutely wonderful human being she was, kept silent too. She kept driving like their sudden conversation hadn't even taken place.
That was exactly what Emily needed. Time. Time to process everything. Time to process the absolute betrayal. No. She didn't want to think about it. Thinking about it made her want to throw up. It made her want to smash something. (And she wasn't a violent person. Not at all.)
Thinking about it made her want to hurt Arianna in the exact same way that she'd been hurt.
But she couldn't do that. She wouldn't. She wasn't that person. So she tried to count the cars they passed, grew tired of it, and dozed off somewhere in the middle of the extremely silent car ride.
Spencer stopped the car near the lake they'd visited what felt like lifetimes ago. (She wished she could spend lifetimes with the sleeping girl next to her, in this place. Wishes, dangerous things.)
"Em? Emily? Wake up!" She gently unstrapped Emily's seat-belt, and shook the slumped form of the taller girl. She didn't want to wake her up. In fact, she just wanted to watch her sleeping. It beat watching her anguished and torn. It was definitely better than listening to her trying to silence her tears in vain. But she needed to make this right. Emily needed her to make this right. That's what she'd said. Right?
Emily opened her eyes slowly, blinking as though her eyelids were weighed down with stones. Her eyes widened, her eyelashes fluttered rapidly, as if she was surprised by the sight of Spencer looming over her, as if she'd forgotten that they'd set off from home a few hours ago. She composed herself and straightened in her seat, trying to smooth the creases in her dress. (The same dress that she'd worn to the art gallery, which now looked crumpled and...somehow, sad-looking. Like evidence from the scene of a crime.)
"Where are we?", Emily asked groggily, rubbing the lingering vestiges of sleep from her still-swollen eyes.
"Shh, just come." Spencer took Emily's hand, and pulled her carefully out of the car. Well, almost. She somehow ended up accidentally knocking Emily's head against the car door.
"Ouch. Spence!", Emily groaned, rubbing a spot on her forehead, shooting daggers with her eyes at her friend.
"I am so sorry! Oh god, are you okay?", Spencer gasped, pushing Emily's hair out of the way and inspecting the harmless looking little bruise that was beginning to form near her temples. She grinned when she realized it was probably nothing. "You sure you don't have a concussion? Maybe we should get a CAT scan."
Emily batted Spencer's hand away, looking indignant. "Way to apologize, Hastings."
Spencer resisted the urge to chuckle (knowing that it would probably earn a well-deserved head-bashing against car-door or perhaps windshield from Emily) and silently led her to the bank of the glassy lake. Memories of the night they had spent here resurfaced in Spencer's mind, feeling her with an unnatural calm. They were as familiar as the pictures in her old photo album, worn and crinkled from being revisited frequently.
"Oh", Emily breathed out when she recognized the place. "I really like this place..", she whispered, as if afraid to break the tranquil stillness of the night. The sharp pain in her chest had reduced to a dull, background throbbing. Her sadness now possessed an unusual ebb and flow, flooding her periodically in lazy waves.
"I figured. You think the water's gonna be really cold?", Spencer asked, taking her heels off and walking barefoot towards the place where the water met with the gravelly sand. She tentatively dipped a toe into the clear liquid, creating tiny ripples that disturbed the frozen-looking surface.
"I'd be surprised if it wasn't", Emily stated quite confidently, mimicking Spencer's movements and taking her own shoes off. The ground was still damp from the rain, and her slow steps created shallow impressions on the mud, her signature next to Spencer's. "Why the sudden interest in the water?"
Spencer turned around, appearing satisfied with her minute examination of the water's temperature. "Let's go swimming", she suggested, her eyes glinting like it always did when she thought she had a brilliant idea. She wasn't smiling though, and her intense gaze made Emily avert her eyes.
Spencer was holding her breath, water pooling around her legs, mud swirling around her bare ankles. She really didn't know when this random thought that come to her. She'd planned on just bringing Emily here to talk. But it was obvious that Emily didn't want to talk. At all. And her coal eyes were burning, not like they had been burning the other night, they were sucking the light from the moon. Whenever Spencer looked at those inky black eyes, she felt like she was staring into a black-hole. The burnt out remains of a dying star. It was scaring her and hurting her and maybe the water would flush out that black, angry fire, maybe it would dampen that dark, tortured blaze. Maybe.
Emily's mind was whirling. This was Spencer's great idea to cheer her up? Would it really provide a distraction? Wouldn't the water remind her of everything bad? (Everything she didn't want to think of? Everything she had given up?)
"I knocked my head, but you seem to be dealing with the side-effects, Spence. We can't go swimming! The water must be really cold, and we don't have swimsuits and I'm so not swimming in this dress and besides I don't even feel like it and it really wouldn't—"
"Shh", Spencer interrupted, unable to hold back any longer. "We'll just go skinny dipping. Like we used to back in sixth grade. Remember?"
Emily's mouth dropped open, and she began to shake her head vehemently. No, no. Absolutely not. That would improve nothing. It would ruin everything. Besides, they'd only gone skinny dipping when there were others with them (Aria, Hanna...Alison). Never alone. Never like this. No. She wouldn't agree.
Spencer's eyebrows rose in warning, her jaw setting like it did whenever she was absolutely resolute on something. It was obvious she wasn't going to take no for an answer. "Don't make me make you", she warned, her voice low and firm. She didn't want to force Emily. She was sure that it would make things worse. But she was also sure that this would really help. And she wanted to help. "When was the last time you swam anyways? You've been too busy with coaching and timing your students and everything."
Emily sighed, caving in under the persistent duress of Spencer's eyes. Yes, maybe she'd do this. It couldn't hurt to try, right? And perhaps the water would be cold enough to make her completely numb. Perhaps it would freeze her emotions. Perhaps it would drown out her grief, and murder her thoughts. Perhaps the clinging memory of this train-wreck of a night would wash away.
"Fine. But remember that you are an unfair, tyrannical dictator."
The force in the statement only made Spencer laugh, then shut up when she Emily glared at her in a frightening manner. She watched the taller girl move to join her, watching her hesitant steps sink into the sand under her feet, watched her hands move up to the straps of her dress and push them away clumsily.
Now would be the time to avert your eyes, Spencer.
But she didn't. She couldn't. Emily passed her, walking further into the reaches of the lake. Spencer felt like her eyesight had suddenly improved, and each raw detail stood out with precision. She saw the goosebumps that had begun to rise on Emily's tanned, smooth arms, she noticed the flash of a lacy bra (she felt her breath hitch and her conscience burn) under Emily's dress which was on its way off her body. She noticed all this without meaning to. (But she watched all of this because she wanted to.)
She almost turned her eyes away when she saw the dress sail past her and land on the shore in a crumpled heap. But she felt she was being stupid. She'd seen Emily undress countless times. (But this was the first time that she was looking and noticing and burning up.) There was nothing unfamiliar in the curve of her bare shoulder, nothing she'd never seen before. But for some vague reason—that Spencer pushed underneath the surface of her consciousness—her eyes roamed the sharp rise of shoulder blades and the curve of hips with more than just idle curiosity.
"Aren't you going to be joining me?", came Emily's voice, breaking into Spencer's thoughts. She was now fully undressed, her beautiful dark complexion glowing and merging with the molten silver of the lake.
"I..eh..yeah." Spencer hastily took off the over-sized t-shirt she was wearing, one that had belonged to Toby many years ago. She had started wearing it because it smelled like him and felt like him, but his perfume had disappeared over time, and now nothing remained in the scruffy cotton except the vanilla smell of the fabric softener they used. She hadn't even changed out of her comfy, plaid, pajama bottoms before leaving home, whose ends were now rimmed with wet mud and soaked completely. The cold wind assaulted her senses, making her shiver once she was completely undressed. This was a mad idea. She had no idea why she'd suggested it in the first place.
Oh, right. Emily.
Emily.
Emily who loved water like a mermaid did. Emily who needed to be around things she loved. (And people.)
(Why hadn't she thought of the pool then? Why hadn't she planned this beforehand? Yeah, of course. Because Spencer Hastings had lost all her logic and reason the minute Emily Fields had stepped in front of her door.)
She needed to focus on Emily now.
Emily, who was nowhere in sight.
"Em? Where are you?", Spencer called out, trudging through the cold water that made the skin of her legs tingle. She heard the splash of water too late and before she knew it, a pair of hands had grabbed her ankle and proceeded to pull her into the depths of the lake. She felt her head go underwater, and saw nothing but blurry, bluish-green lights swimming in her vision. She resurfaced a moment later, and found herself quite a bit away from the shore, still no Emily in sight.
"Are you done taking your revenge?", Spencer asked out loud, pushing limp, wet locks out of her eyes.
"Maybe", came a voice behind her, warm breath hitting her shoulder, making goosebumps rise in its wake. Spencer turned around, standing on tiptoes to keep her head above water. A familiar smile curling Emily's lips greeted her, making her stomach swoop a little. (Although she attributed her reaction to the shock from the sand shifting beneath her feet.)
"Who's being unfair now?", Spencer complained, reaching out and nudging Emily's shoulder.
"You're in my turf now. You can't be best at everything", Emily mocked her in a sing-song voice. Spencer was relieved to see that the black fire in her eyes had died down a little, and was nothing more than a flickering flame now. The water was doing its job. Fire versus ice.
"If I tried, I'm sure I could beat you." The cocky tone had returned to Spencer's voice, perhaps much more exaggerated than usual. She wanted to return to normalcy. Wanted to indulge in conversation that would restore Emily to her Emily.
"No one can beat me", Emily shrugged, her demureness gone for once. She turned around and dove underwater, her swiftly moving legs following her. All Spencer could make out was the ripple of the water above what she thought to be Emily's figure moving fast under the shimmering surface. She was enthralled, awed by the fluidity of her movements. Each motion, each fall and rise of her arm, each stroke that sliced through the glittering surface, was like watching the deft movements of an artist's brush.
God. Spencer needed to stop thinking.
Emily felt like she was some aquatic creature who had been deprived of its environment; returning to the water, feeling the movement of the liquid beneath her strong muscles, reveling in the pleasant burn in her arms made her mind drift away into blissfulness. God, she'd missed swimming. Swimming like this. Without times to worry about, without having anyone to beat, without paying extra attention to every stroke. The shocking effect of the cold water was wearing off and it was almost a soothing relief to her now. All her senses were alive, and she could practically feel the liquid shifting around her with every nerve ending that she possessed.
Spencer watched Emily's strokes describe a perfect circle and return to its center. To her.
"You are so good", Spencer whispered once Emily's was within earshot, letting the swimmer notice the admiration that was evident on the usually composed face. Emily's shyness made a comeback and she lowered her eyes, accepting the compliment quietly. (That expression did things to the space within Spencer's chest that she couldn't name.)
"Please go back to being a pro. I can't see how you won't be winning us medals at the Olympics. You'll make them eat dust. Or..rather, drink water", Spencer continued, oblivious to the sudden change in the air, the almost unnoticeable alteration to Emily's expression. By the time that Spencer realized that she'd said something wrong (another misstep, again) it was too late. Emily's eyes were pitch black, frozen ash, burnt-out stars again. And her smile had withered, her light had flickered off, her mouth had turned upside down in an obvious show of despair.
"Hey, hey. I'm sorry." Spencer half swam, half bobbed towards Emily, grasping her shoulder in a silent show of comfort. "I shouldn't have said that." Spencer could feel herself entering Emily's gravitational field (apparently burnt-out stars still retained their pull), she could feel the dark energy emanating from the tanned girl next to her, she could almost sense the pinpricks of lights dotting the sky begin to go out one by one.
Emily shied away from Spencer's touch, her face twisted in a picture of pure agony. Spencer wanted to negate her movement, wanted to erase the distance between them, wanted to tell Emily that it was just her, that there was nothing to worry about. But she couldn't find the right words. Perhaps for the first time in her life, Spencer's mind was nothing but a blank, and she almost fell under the illusion of the water around her hardening into ice, mimicking her own inability to act. She watched the tides broken by the sudden splash of a golden form, gazed helplessly as Emily increased the unbearable distance between them, watched the night swallow her up as she reached the shore and fished for her clothes.
Spencer followed mechanically, suddenly hyper-aware of the coldness of the lake, of the countless goosebumps on her arms, the prune-like texture of her fingertips. She felt unnaturally shy (she was never, ever self-conscious) when she reached the banks, but she soon noticed that she had nothing to worry about. Emily was seated on the remains of a dead, grey tree, her form half-hidden by gnarled branches twisting towards the sky. Spencer got dressed, wrung out her hair, and cautiously approached the quiet girl.
"Emily?"
No reply. Not even an acknowledgement of her presence.
"I'm so sorry for hurting you. Because I really didn't mean to."
Again, no response. But Spencer did notice a slight change in the tanned girl's posture, a minute shift in her irregular breathing.
"I want to know what I said wrong." Spencer reviewed her words, wondering if they sounded like an order. "Please", she added in an unsure voice.
Emily's lip quivered, and she turned her face away like she always did. A solitary tear slid down her cheek, a drop of fluid diamond painting a straight line down bronze cheeks. She was trying so hard to be strong. So hard that it made Spencer want to tell her to stop trying. That it was okay to break down. That it would be alright if Emily broke down in front of her. She wouldn't mind at all.
Emily could think about nothing but how the girl she had sacrificed her everything for had cheated on her. Broken her trust. Betrayed her love. After everything Emily had given up for Arianna, she had been rewarded with nothing but infidelity. And it had broken her heart (and it continued to do so) and that swimming comment was just too much, too soon. She couldn't help but feel the wound inside her multiply into a million little cuts that burned as if they had been sprinkled with lemon and salt (and lethal acid).
"She cheated on me, Spence." Emily's voice was quiet, but it held a mechanical quality, as if it had been uttered by a robot, or had just filtered through millions of miles of telephone lines. "I gave up everything for her and it still wasn't enough."
Those words seemed to have the effect of a key, unlocking the gates to the flood that Emily had been keeping in check. She started sobbing, her teardrops falling to the sand and leaving their reminder. She let herself be pulled into a hug by Spencer who had leaped to her side, she let her hair be brushed in a sympathetic manner, she let herself fall limp, surrendered herself to the torrent of emotion that was overwhelming her. She cried and cried till her tears ran dry, till her eyes felt like they were going to completely seal shut forever, till her arms ached from holding (clutching, grasping) onto Spencer.
Spencer was similarly stranded in a flood of feelings. Although hers varied radically from the former swimmer's. Her emotions were tainted with a violent red, not a melancholy blue. She saw crimson, she felt scarlet fury in her veins, her heart choked and swelled with a burst of fire-engine red hued hatred. If Emily hadn't been holding on so hard that it made movement almost impossible, Spencer was sure she would've done something as stupid as punch the water. Or kick against the sand. Or burn the entire world for making a moment possible where Emily was hurt and she could do nothing about it. For all the freezing water that had surrounded her, she now felt like she had just gone swimming in a pool of lava. Every little whimper, every choked sob, every shudder she felt passing through Emily felt like a stab of a double-edged, poison-dripping knife between her ribs, going straight for her heart. (Everything hurt so much, everything made her so, so angry.)
After what felt like years, Emily pulled away, disentangling herself from Spencer. Her red-rimmed eyes were still watery with unshed tears, and the redness of her nose was plainly visible despite her dark skin. "I'm sorry for breaking down like that." She gulped, biting her lip and looking into Spencer's eyes with heartbreaking honesty. "You must think I'm so weak...", she trailed off uncertainly.
Spencer shook her head vehemently in protest. "She's the weak one. I will annihilate her."
Emily's expression seemed to disagree. "Obviously it's my fault. Whenever I fall in love with someone, they leave. Everything always goes wrong for me."
"How is it your fault if she cheated? You're not thinking straight. She doesn't deserve you at all, Em." Spencer's voice had a pleading tone to it, and she clutched Emily's hands in hers, as if she could transmit her thoughts to her by mere touch.
Spencer felt so helpless, so utterly unable to offer anything but her words.
Stupid words that were doing nothing. Nothing at all.
Emily's fingers tightened around Spencer's and she looked down. Remnants of tears were still clinging to her long lashes, and it was all Spencer could do to not reach out and brush them away.
"Maybe if I hadn't left her all those months ago...Maybe if I'd been a better girlfriend. I don't know, Spence. I mess everything up. It's not her fault that I wasn't interesting enough...", Emily murmured, pain and shame lacing her voice, feeling familiar insecurities rise up again. Arianna had always made her feel like she was doing Emily a favour by being in a relationship with her. As if she had had to move mountains and swim across seas to be able to be with Emily. Emily had always felt that she was never good enough for her. And now she had the proof to back her suspicions. She was a mere nobody. "I just wish I'd done things differently, you know? Maybe if I'd been nicer, or more caring or—"
Spencer couldn't stop herself anymore. She stopped the flow of Emily's words with a finger to her lips. (She could still feel the deep imprints that teeth had made there during their crying session.)
"Em, listen to me", Spencer started, ignoring the look of surprise that flitted through coal-black eyes.
"You are perfect. No, scratch that. You are better than perfect. Perfect's boring. I'm perfect and look at how dull I am", she ventured, smiling a little at the last bit. "Ever since I've known you, I've been sure of one thing. That you, Emily Fields, were the best of us all. And perhaps that's why you always wanted to see the best in everyone else too. Even Alison. Even me, especially when I was a horrible person. You are the purest, nicest person I've ever known. And that's not all. You are also the...", Spencer stopped, pausing to catch her breath before she dove back into the flow of her sentence "...the most exquisite creature alive. Really. And anyone who would want to give your heart up would have to be the biggest moron on the face of this planet."
Despite all the sadness weighing her down, Emily felt something in her heart sprout wings and start to flutter. She had never seen such raw honesty on Spencer's face, never heard her speak like this before. Her trademark husky voice was scratchier, and those pools of burnt sienna were staring into Emily with such fierce intensity that she felt like she'd been laid bare before Spencer. All her troubles, all her complexes, all her fears, all her doubts were suddenly under the magnifying glass of her gaze. And they disappeared, turned to ash and dust and sifted away and suddenly, her burden was so much lighter. She could breathe again.
Emily allowed a little smile to appear on her lips. "You're just saying that because you love me too much", she whispered demurely, her eyes shining with gratitude.
Spencer's lips mirrored hers, and she inched closer, placing her palm on the smooth planes of Emily's cheek. Marble, stem-like fingers on glowing caramel skin. Spencer's eyes took in each excruciatingly stark detail of her face from the dimpled smile to the glittering stars for eyes.
"Maybe. But it's not my fault. I really love beautiful things", Spencer replied just as quietly, her words a mere exhalation, a silent prelude to what came later. Burnt-out stars had nothing on alive ones, ones that blazed with such eternal perfection in the dark corridors of Emily's eyes that Spencer felt like a mere meteor, burning up in their field. So she allowed herself to fall, blamed the gravity between their bodies for the distance between them suddenly disappearing.
The world seemed suspended in time and Spencer was reminded of a faint memory of a vague dream and all she could think about was how Emily smelled like burnt cinnamon, crushed peppercorns and something much more sweeter and headier. She leaned in, inhaling deeply like a drugged person, feeling like she was lost in deep woods without a compass or even a flashlight. What was she doing? She had no idea. (But she did. She knew exactly what she wanted and she was going to have it.)
Emily didn't move from her spot, did not even inch away as Spencer's face closed in. There was only an ever so slight widening of her eyes, and Spencer could feel her stop breathing. She was sure she herself wasn't breathing as well. She felt delirious, she felt like she had a fever, but she couldn't stop herself from drawing closer and closer until their noses touched, until their breaths got tangled like invisible silken threads.
Eyes burned holes into eyes, and Spencer felt something snap inside her. (It was a sensation that she had never come across before, so she didn't know what it meant.) She took a long, shaking breath and pressed her lips against Emily's.
Fire. Fire, everywhere.
The world was burning. The stars went out and the earth seemed to spin faster than ever and everything merged into one.
It was supposed to be nothing but a mere touch. A tentative start. Meaningless. But Spencer found herself kissing Emily hungrily, her hands moving of their own accord to her waist, pushing their bodies closer, closer, not enough, even closer until there was nothing left but a whisper of air between them. Emily's lips were frozen at first, and she gasped, a muffled sound, but now she was kissing Spencer back with restrained passion, as if wanting to stop but finding herself incapable of doing so.
Spencer wondered if maybe Emily just didn't have stars for eyes, but perhaps she was made out of millions of stars, made out of some fiery substance that tasted like heaven and burned its way down her throat like hell. Her lips were softer than she had imagined (and god, she had imagined) and they had this wonderful way of applying just the right pressure, yielding at the right times under Spencer's eager kisses. Their mouths fitted against each other like puzzle pieces, and their hands were everywhere, pulling, tugging, twisting useless pieces of fabric, anything to stop themselves from searching someplace else, someplace forbidden (for now). She felt tendrils of fire twist around them, enveloping them till she was sure they were blazing brighter than the sun, that they were a flaming torch of pure, unadulterated passion.
There were so many sensations crowding in on Spencer that she almost missed the sudden change in the charged atmosphere, she almost didn't notice Emily backing away, pulling out of the kiss inch by inch until their lips were touching no more and they were breathing (gasping, panting) into each other. Spencer wasn't going to let go so easily and she followed Emily almost unconsciously, like a moth to a flame, and captured her lips once again in a searing kiss that melted her insides and made her chest feel like it was about to burst.
Emily sighed into the kiss, giving in to the amazing pressure of Spencer's mouth against hers. She felt Spencer's hands twist in her hair, she felt her skinny arms lock Emily into place and she felt her resistance crumble against the overwhelming electricity that sizzled wherever their skins met (lips, fingers, arms, knees). She couldn't remember the last time she had felt like this (never), she couldn't recall when she had kissed with such emotion (again, never) and she really couldn't figure out when she had fallen in love with faint-vanilla and citrusy smell that Spencer carried with her everywhere. But she honestly didn't care. Spencer deepened the kiss, her hand moving to the small of Emily's back, her teeth grazing against edge of Emily's lips. Emily felt a sharp thrill run down her spin, felt herself open her mouth to grant entrance to her probing tongue, felt her head spinning with each drawn moment.
This was going to kill her.
It was going to kill them both.
But they kept kissing, moving away, breathing and kissing again, their lips participating in a complicated dance, their tongues intimately acquainting themselves with each other, their hearts beating rapidly in step with each others.
Spencer felt like she could do this forever, that perhaps this was what people meant by attaining nirvana, that perhaps she had finally had a lethal dosage of pure, human ecstasy. And she didn't ever want to stop feeling like this. So she held on to Emily like she was clinging on to the last remaining stands of sanity (or more accurately, blissful insanity) and allowed her actions to replace her words, allowed her kisses and touches and little back-of-the-throat sounds of appreciation to speak for themselves. This felt like a conversation that would last for hours.
A/N: Soooo. Yep. For all those who had been craving some Spemily action, there you go! Lemme know what you thought? ;D
spinoza-off: You always catch onto those little things. Bravo, really. That's what I love about Spemily too. They're never too sweet with each other, they're not overly mushy, they're not...simple or uncomplicated or plain boring. There's just so many layers to their relationship that it's a pleasure to write about them, really. Their relationship somehow manages to encompass basically every shade of the emotional spectrum and that is why they're just too beautiful. Thanks a lot for the wonderful review.
LaughLoveLiveXx: I love Spanish, it's such a great language. :D
Yeah, as much as I want to focus on Spencer and Emily, I feel like robbing the other characters of the spotlight will make the story a little hard to follow as the plot is also very much about the other people and they are as integral in this story as Spemily.
And yeah, poor Emily. She does get the short end of the stick too many times. And it's really not like she deserves it as well. But they do that in cannon a lot as well, so I thought doing that in this story would just tie in with her basic background.
Oooh. I love how you picked up on that! We'll see how much exactly Toby knows in the future. :)
Thanks a lot for your comments.
Guest: Hehe, I hope you find that it is a beautiful Spemily story too!
x-sugarfree-x: Danielle is very audacious, which would explain why Ari cheated on Emily with her of all people. I do feel so sorry for Toby, he's too good to Spencer, but we know that Spencer really belongs with Emily. You'll have to wait and find out what happens with Emily! And you are right, Ari doesn't let go of anything without a fight.
tharuka: Sexual tension is possibly my favouritest thing ever. Haha. And thanks a lot! I hope I don't let you down. :)
LittleLiarLovesEmily: I hope you enjoyed the Spemily in this chapter. There's more waiting for later chapters! :)